Cooking lids are commonly used to cover cooking vessels such as pots, pans and other kinds of containers while preparing food or boiling water. A disadvantage of conventional cooking lids is that a typical conventional cooking lid only lid only fits a pot/pan of a particular size. Therefore, the user might have to dig through his/her cooking drawers in order to find the right lid for the desired pot/pan to be used. A typical conventional cooking lid has a semi-spherical base member with a handle on the exterior surface. The outer rim of a typical cooking lid contacts the outer rim of the cookware. This is why a typical cooking lid is inoperable if the lid is not particularly sized to fit the piece of cookware being used.
By contrast, the present invention provides a cooking lid with the handle on the interior surface of the semi-spherical base member. This allows the cooking lid to contact the outer rim of a piece of cookware at many different positions. This allows the cooking lid of the present invention to fit a whole range of cookware sizes. It is estimated that 3 different cooking lids according to the present invention could cover nearly all sizes of cookware on the market.
Cooking lids with vent holes or ventilation systems have been used for efficient and proper cooking or reheating of food. These cooking lids are typically designed with vent holes to allow the steam to escape from the cooking vessel and, thereby, reduce the amount of pressure in the cooking vessel that results in boiling over/lid rattling issues and also provides a uniform distribution of the heat inside the pot. In these kinds of systems, cooking causing lids to release vapor from the container or cooking vessel under pressure. Such lids can cause the loss of nutritive properties from the foods and the splattering of food particles.
Various types of cooking lids have been devised. One of the existing cooking lids describes a splatter-proof lid capable of two settings, one in which vent passages are provided to allow fumes from under the lid to pass to the exterior and another in which the vent passages are closed. This splatter-proof lid having a central knob and two lid portions. However, the lid portions have to be separated for providing vent passages for cooking fumes or vapors to escape from a pan or pot. In addition, the lid cannot be placed in a displaced position on the cooking vessel brim to allow the vapor to escape between rim and side walls.
Some conventional cooking lids include an adjustable ventilation system that uses the combination of various sized holes to modify and regulate the release of steam and provide the retention of moisture within the cooking vessel. However, the adjustable ventilation system is releasably secured to the cooking vessel and so the user often finds it difficult to attach and remove the adjustable ventilation system from the cooking vessel.
Another existing cooking lid describes a body portion having a rim, an underside, and a handle, wherein the rim has a support surface and an outer surface, and is matched to a brim on the cooking vessel brim in size and shape. The lid is configured to be placed in a closed position on the cooking vessel brim and is configured to be placed in a displaced position on a plane of the cooking vessel brim. However, the lid includes additional pair of lugs to keep the lid is in the displaced position on the cooking vessel brim.
Some other traditional cooking lids can be placed on top of each other, with the largest lid uppermost and the smallest lid lowermost. The disadvantage of this approach is increased production costs associated with multiple lid diameters. Also, these lids are only matches with the pots/pans having similar diameter. Thus the size of the cooking lid is restricted by the size of the pots/pans. This approach can also lack sufficient stability for stacking different sized cooking lids. Attempts have been made to compensate for this instability with a lid having a handle which is configured to engage the underside of another such or similar lid so that the latter can be supported on the handle in a substantially stable condition. However, this approach sometimes causes the slipping of the lid from the other lid, and also greatly restricts the number of cooking lids to be stacked.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved cooking lid that provides ventilation for efficient and proper cooking or reheating of food. As such, the cooking lid includes a tapered surface that provides a ventilation channel. The needed cooking lid includes one or more venting perforations to provide efficient ventilation. The needed cooking lid includes a handle which is configured to fit snugly with one or more protrusions on a stand on the underside of another cooking lid, thereby allowing multiple cooking lids to be easily and tightly stacked. Finally, the cooking lid could be placed off-center relative to center of the cooking vessel in a displaced position due to the tapered structure of the cooking lid without causing the release of the cooking lid from the cooking vessel.
Conventional container lids face many of the same challenges as described above for cooking lids. Usually only there is only one configuration of lid that “fits” a particular container. Once again, this means that “fitting” container lid must be located and matched with the right container. Therefore, there is a current need for a universal container lid that fits containers with an entire range of diameters.